Out to Lunch: Joe's Shanghai, Midtown

There's something about the chaos of Manhattan's Chinatown that I find both exhilarating and maddening. You have to fight your way through the Canal Street crowds, hold your breath past the fish stalls and side-step the knock-off vendors. For your troubles, you can reward yourself with a hot bowl of pho or a fresh banh mi, a heaping take-out container of bbq pork, a whole Peking duck or a plate full of hand-pulled noodles. Joe's Shanghai on narrow, curvy Pell Street is a restaurant worth the trip off Canal and the wait for a seat at a large, round communal table. It's bright, bustling and noisy - but you've staked out your space and it's time for a cheap, satisfying and tasty meal.

Does the intensity of the location add to the experience? I'm going to have to say yes. While I was excited to discover the Joe's Shanghai in midtown near my office, I just couldn't imagine that it would be as fun as the one in Chinatown. On my first visit, not only was the environment disappointing - it was dark, quiet and empty - but my soup dumplings arrived as sad, deflated sacks - the rich, salty broth had boiled out from overcooking. They were still tasty, but they were just steamed dumplings with dense pork.

I didn't write off the place for one bad batch, but it took me a while to go back. Chinese New Year rolled around, and I had dumplings on my mind. I asked around the office, but no one was up for it. I was especially surprised by my co-worker Ryan, who was definitely not interested in dumplings or Chinese food at all. This shocked me. I mean, who doesn't like dumplings?? Take some form of dough, stuff it with a savory filling and boil, bake, fry or steam it to perfection. What's not to love? So I got it into my head that I had to get Ryan over to Joe's and feed him soup dumplings and blow his mind, like mine was the first time I had them.

A Very Special Supper Club... with Amanda Hesser

Guess who came to dinner last Thursday night? Or maybe the title of the post gave it away?

Here's how it went down: Kara asked me to help out (as sous chef and stuff) at another Ted & Amy Supper Club and Amanda Hesser was our very special guest. Amanda recently published a little book of recipes you might have heard of - The Essential New York Times Cookbook. This weighty tome represents more than five years of Amanda's life spent sifting through and testing a century and a half of recipes published in the venerable New York Times to find the best of the best. And then we asked her to sift through all the recipes in the book to put together a menu for us to make for a group of strangers in Kara's home.



I'm going to confess that we were a teeny bit nervous cooking for Amanda. Not just because she's a Very Important Well Known Food Person, but also because these are recipes that she has made herself - that she edited and tested and will darn well know if they're not done right. On the other hand, we weren't nervous, because the point of the Ted & Amy Supper Club is less about showing off mad cooking skillz and more about bringing people together around a table in a casual and comfortable environment; the food would be good (at the very least!) and there would be a lot of wine, so everyone would be in good spirits.



Any concerns we may have had went out the window once she arrived. Amanda is charming and gracious. She wanted to know if we had any feedback on the recipes and was amazed at how calm and organized we were. We had the appetizers (stuffed fried olives, Florentine dip with crudités and Parmesan crackers) arranged in the living area and at the end of the long dining table, set for 14 guests with flowers and tea lights all along. Over by the kitchen, we had a bar area set up for the cocktail of the night - another recipe from Amanda's book, Gin Rickeys. The puntarelle for the salad course was soaking in cold water and the stew - braised beef in a tomato and herb sauce, was bubbling away on the stove. We were ready!



Once all the guests had arrived and had their rickey or glass of wine in hand, Kara introduced Amanda, who gave a brief run-through of the menu. I was pretty impressed that she knew the era and author for each recipe. I imagine that over the course of her research she must have immersed herself not only in the recipes, but also in the changing food culture and the personalities and quirks of the writers who came and went over the years. Later, I learned from her husband that Amanda had done all of the recipe testing for the book in their home kitchen, with just one assistant. Mind-boggling, really - did you see the size of that book?



After the formal introductions were out of the way, we started in on the appetizers and the rest of the evening was standard supper club schedule - lots of food and wine, good company and conversation. I'm afraid I revealed my lack of thorough knowledge of The New Yorker magazine while talking with Tad Friend, Amanda's husband and writer for same. He was very gracious, and listened to me blab on about blogging and watching Californication and other fun nonsense.



As usual, all the guests were fun and interesting and everyone seemed to have a good time. We finished the night with dessert served from the kitchen, so everyone could mingle again and maybe talk with someone who had been at the other end of the table.

In my opinion, the best recipes of the night were the apps and beef stew. Oh, those briny fried olives! And the Florentine dip is a more sophisticated version of your favorite, addictive packet-mixed-with-sour-cream dip. In the stew, the braised beef is fall-apart tender with a wine, tomato and herb sauce that you ladle over oven-broiled bread rubbed with fresh garlic. The bread softens in the sauce, but you get a taste of the garlic here and there - just enough to keep you searching around for more.

To make the recipes from our supper club, look for an upcoming post on The Local. Also, be sure to check out Amanda's cool site: Food52

Out to Lunch: Taam-Tov

I barely leave my desk, much less my office, for lunch. I usually have some sort of salad and a bowl of "what I made to eat this week." Lately it's been Thai fried rice, made from the extra little cartons of white rice left over from Chinese delivery and whatever veggies/protein I have in the fridge. If I don't bring my lunch, there's always the cheap company-subsidized cafeteria in our building.

I don't often go out for three main reasons:

A. I'm cheap - calculate the cost of homemade food and you will totally reconsider that $10 salad or sandwich from your local deli chain store.

B. I'm trying to eat "healthier" which doesn't include the roast pork noodle soup or Five Guys burgers I end up scarfing down when I go out.

and 3. It takes too damn long and my boss sits in the cubicle right behind me and never, ever leaves for lunch.

The thing is, I love to go out to eat. I have long lists of places I want to try - garnered from blogs, books, foursquare, twitter and friends. New York is just brimming with amazing food from high brow to down and dirty. So I decided to start whittling away at my list on my lunch break - plus I need to get my ass out my desk chair and breathe some of that fresh NY air. Ahh...

To kill two birds with one stone, I thought it would be great to ask co-workers to come along. I barely know anyone I work with and there's nothing like breaking bread together to forge the bonds of friendship. After several weeks of work-related delays, I finally headed out with Rob, a Product Development Analyst who works a few rows down the cubicle farm from me in a different department. We decided to try Taam-Tov, a glatt kosher restaurant featuring dishes from in and around Bukhara, Uzbekistan and located in the Diamond District. What, you may ask, the hell does that mean? I had no idea, so off we went to find out.

Turns out (I'm geographically challenged so I had to look it up on Google maps) that Uzbekistan is firmly nestled in among the other 'stans you may be more familiar with, like Afghanistan and Pakistan to the south and Kazakhstan to the north. More 'stans on the east and west borders, too. This puts the food squarely into that unfamiliar-to-me category of Middle Eastern meets Asian. It seems that Bukhara has long had a population of Jews, hence the kosher angle. I wasn't sure what to expect, other than hummus and kebabs. I accidentally left the yellow sticky on which I'd scribbled a number of interweb-recommended dishes on my desk. Rob and I decided we could wing it, and headed down to 47th Street, where, amid a sea of sparkling diamonds, we found the entrance and climbed two flights of stairs to the bustling restaurant. A few minutes later we were seated and focused on the paper take-out-style English menu. The regular menus were either in Russian, Uzbek or Tajik, but I certainly couldn't tell which.

We ordered a good variety of dishes:


Samsa: A sesame topped dumpling stuffed with beef and well-cooked onions. Not bad, but a bit dry.



Manty: One source I found suggested that despite the filling being very similar to the samsa, it was worth it to get both. I really liked the manty - not the prettiest things to look at, but the filling was well seasoned, the wrapper was soft and not gummy and the cilantro on top added a fresh note that the samsa was missing.



Lamb rib kebabs: We wondered how ribs would be kebab'ed and were surprised to find that they had been cut into tiny, bone-in squares and threaded onto the somewhat scary metal skewers. These skewers are seriously heavy-metal! The lamb was salty, hot, fatty and smoky from the grill. I liked it, but fair warning - it was greasy and a bit gamey - in a good way. Oh, and the fries were awful. Yes, I still ate them, because they're fries, after all, but ugh. They were under-cooked and tasted like a freezer, not at all like the review I read that said they were well-crisped and thick-cut. Maybe they had run out of their regular potatoes and resorted to the year-old back up supply in their reserve freezer.

Lepeshka: Bukharian homemade bread. I liked it, but along with the two dumplings and the fries that came with the kebabs, this was some serious carb-loading (see reason B for not going out to eat often, above.) I tore off pieces and dipped them into the juice on the salad plate.


Israeli Salad: we almost didn't order this, but went for it, since there were no fresh veggies to be had in our other dishes. I'm so glad we did - it was a refreshing and generous salad of chopped cucumbers, onion, green peppers and tomatoes with a light vinaigrette.

Rob was a great lunch companion - he endeared himself to me immediately upon sitting down at our table by saying that he liked to share dishes so we could try a bigger variety. He was up for pretty much anything on the menu - except dessert, which was listed on the menu as "Cake of the day (with Nuts.)" Rob surmised that the cake of the day was probably the same everyday. With Nuts. Of course, now I wish we'd tried it, just for the novelty...

Over lunch, Rob and I found out that we both are from Pennsylvania and both went to Penn State University. We are both single with ex-boyfriends who are still part of our lives. Rob lives in New Jersey and he and his ex run a catering company there together, although business has slowed recently. Rob says that he's not very interested in getting into another relationship and feels happy on his own. He and his friends recently made an alcohol-fueled pact to buy a house in Florida together and be The Golden Boys when they retire. I'm guessing Rob would play the part of Dorothy. He doesn't seem like a Blanche type and he's too smart to be Rose and too nice to be Sofia.

At the end of lunch, Rob surprised me by picking up the check. Isn't that just the nicest thing?! It was so fun to try a new (and unusual!) restaurant and get to know my coworker better!

Our neighbors at the next table were enjoying themselves:


Taam-Tov
41 West 47th Street, 3rd Floor
NY, NY
212-768-8001

PS. This is just the cutest thing and makes me seriously love this amazing, diverse, crazy city I live in: on the menu from Taam-Tov the following hours are listed:

M-Th: 10am - 9pm
Friday: 10 - Two Hours Before Sabbath
Sunday: 11am - 8pm

Two hours before Sabbath - I just love it!